The
USA in Antarctica
The History and Activity of the United States of America
in Antarctica

Americans
have been involved in many early voyages including
that of sealer Nathaniel Palmer who has a claim
to be the first person to set eyes on the Antarctic
continent in November 1820 (not an especially
strong claim unfortunately). The Wilkes Expedition
was instrumental in establishing that Antarctica
was indeed a continent in 1840. Official interest
at least in the continent then waned for some
considerable time.

The
20th century inter-war period and the years following the
second world war saw activity increase significantly
with a number of well resourced private and
national expeditions taking place leading to
the US becoming a leading light in the International
Geophysical Year, IGY which led to the Antarctic
Treaty. The USA was one of the very first
signatory nations of the Antarctic Treaty in
1960 and is a consultative party with voting
rights able to make decisions about
Antarctica.

There are a number of modern American
scientific bases going back nearly 60 years
which are currently at the forefront of modern
research in Antarctica.

The USA is an Original
Signatory and a Consultative Party of the Antarctic
Treaty. This means that it is one of
the countries that play an active role in Antarctica,
it is engaged in substantial scientific research
activity - only the consultative parties have
voting rights and can make decisions about Antarctica.

Current -
United Sates Antarctic
Program USAP - 1956 - present. USAP is managed and
funded by the National Science Foundation
(NSF) Division of Polar Progams in the Directorate
for Geosciences.
There are three year-round Antarctic
research stations as detailed above. In
addition, summer
field camps are established to allow
scientists to
engage in research away from the established research
stations in remote locations.

Air support for the bases is provided in the
form of large ski-equipped LC-130 airplanes, operated by US Air National Guard crews,
these fly from Christchurch, New Zealand to
the Amundsen-Scott
South Pole Station and McMurdo Station. U.S. Air Force wheeled C-17's are also
used to fly personnel and
supplies to Antarctica. Helicopters, Twin Otter airplanes, and Basler
(DC-10) airplanes, flown by contractors support research teams at sites away
from the main bases.
A variety of vehicles, tracked and wheeled vehicles
are used for transport over ice and ice-free
land areas.

Shipping support is provided by two ice-strengthened research vessels, Laurence M. Gould and Nathaniel B. Palmer,
these
resupply Palmer Station and carry out oceanographic research voyages. An ice-strengthened cargo ship and tanker bring cargo, supplies, and fuel to
McMurdo Station for both McMurdo and the South Pole stations once a year at the
beginning of the Antarctic summer season.
South Pole cargo are then flown on from
McMurdo. Currently USAP contracts out much of the operational and
logistic support to the civilian contractor
Lockheed Martin Corporation.

The total budget for U.S. Antarctic research
and logistics is around USD $ 330 million
(2012), with around USD $ 70m of this going
directly to research institutions. The rest
goes to research support and safety & health
programs.

Nathaniel Palmer on board
the Hero sighted land south of Deception
Island on the 16th of November 1820, while the rest of the sealing
fleet hunted around the South Shetland Islands
that had only been discovered the previous year,
the Hero explored. The ship explored
to the west and south but found no further seals
and so returned north again. The area was later
named the Palmer Archipelago. The next year
Palmer proceeded eastwards with a British sealer
where he was part of the discovery of the South
Orkney Islands in December 1821.

Captain John Davis, sealer
captain is the first person to set foot on Antarctica
on the 7th of Feb 1821. A party of men
from the sealing ship Cecilia set ashore
and spent less than an hour looking (unsuccessfully)
for seals. This may have been the very
first landing on the Antarctic continent though
is not accepted by all historians.

United
States Exploring Expedition 1838 - 1842,
reported the discovery "of
an Antarctic continent west of the Balleny Islands",
this part of Antarctica was later named Wilkes
Land after Charles Wilkes the leader of the
expedition at that point (he wasn't the original
leader). The intention was to have ventured
into the Weddell Sea on the Western side of
the continent though this was limited by the
lack of suitable equipment and clothing. The
expedition was the first to sail along a substantial
length of coast in Eastern Antarctica so proving
that there was a continental sized landmass.

The Heroic Age
1900-1922

There were no American led or organised expeditions
during the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration,
though Americans took part in expeditions
organized by other nations during this era.

Frederick
Albert Cook - Surgeon,
anthropologist and photographer.
Belgica 1897-99 -
Belgian Antarctic Expedition.
The first expedition to overwinter in Antarctica
on board the ship frozen into the sea-ice off
the Antarctica Peninsula. The crew were not
prepared for the over-wintering and they suffered
from a lack of food, clothing and supplies while
some developed psychological problems. Frederick
Cook and Roald Amundsen are both credited with
helping keep the crew alive and able to survive
the winter, not least by hunting for fresh meat
to help protect them from the effects of scurvy.
In 1908 Cook claimed to be the first person
to reach the North Pole, a claim that is considered
to be fraudulent or at best mistaken.

William
Lincoln Bakewell
- Able SeamanEndurance
1914 - 17 -
British Trans-Antarctica ExpeditionShackleton's Endurance
expedition is one of the most famous of all
adventure tales not only from the Antarctic,
even though the expedition came no-where near
achieving its aims (the Endurance being
sunk before even reaching its first landfall
at the edge of the Weddell Sea). The story remains
one of the most incredible adventures of all
time with all members of the ships crew brought
safely home against a range of unfavourable
odds. Every member of the crew played a role
in the adventure.

William Bakewell joined the Endurance
at Buenos Aires. He was the only American aboard
ship, though he posed as a Canadian thinking
that the British ship would be more inclined
to take on a subject of the British Empire.
The Endurance had become three crew members
short and Bakewell was taken on for this reason.
Unknown to Shackleton at the time, Bakewell
helped his friend Perce Blackborow to also join
the ship unofficially as a stowaway. Bakewell
was well liked and Shackleton regarded him to
be: "... a cut above
the rest of the seamen".
more

Scientific
Exploration, Bases
and Research after 1922

1928 - 30 -
Richard Byrd's First Expedition. Two
ships, the City of New York and
Eleanor Bolling deposited Byrd and his team on the Ross
Sea side of Antarctica for a two year privately
funded expedition. The most highly publicized
event was the very first flight over the South
Pole on the 28th of November 1929 by Byrd and
three others following the route taken by Amundsen.
The flight took 16 hours in total at a time
when long flights of any kind were unusual and
not lightly undertaken. The expedition
established an overwintering station named
"Little America" 7 miles inland from the ice
edge at the Bay of Whales.

1933 - 35 -
Richard Byrd's Second Expedition.
Following the success of the first
expedition, Richard Byrd immediately began
planning a second expedition. The ships,
Bear of Oakland and Jacob Ruppert
sailed from the USA in late 1933 arriving at
Little America Base in January 1934 where
supplies were dropped including 150 sled
dogs and 4 aircraft. Byrd himself decided to
overwinter alone on a small separate weather
station, while the first several weeks
passed uneventfully enough, he was
eventually rescued by his fellow winterers
from the main base who had become concerned.
They found him disheveled and suspected of
being poisoned by carbon monoxide from a
solid fuel stove. Later much valuable
pioneering exploration work was carried out
by aircraft, tractors and dog teams. Byrd's
detailed planning had described some
previously huge gaps in the map of
Antarctica and had trained a generation of
men in working and researching in
Antarctica. The USA was established as a
leading nation in the exploration of
Antarctica.

1935: In November, Lincoln Ellsworth
is the first to successfully fly across the
continent. Following unsuccessful
attempts in the 1933-34 and 1934-35 seasons,
Ellsworth succeeded in December 1935 after
an epic journey where he and pilot Herbert
Hollick-Kenyon first landed 650 miles short
of the destination at Byrd's Little America
station. Upon resuming their flight, and after forced landings due to bad
weather leading to delays of 3 days and then 7 days
they finally ran out of fuel with 15 miles
to go. 6 days later they found the base
buried under the snow but well provisioned
with food and fuel. A month later they were
found by a party of men from another ship
while their own ship, the Wyatt Earp arrived
four days later. Ellsworth's expeditions
from 1933-39 explored large areas of
Antarctica either little or not at all
visited previously.

1939 - 41 United States Antarctic Service
Expedition. The now Rear Admiral
Richard Byrd was tasked with commanding an
expedition to set up two long term manned
stations in Antarctica. This was a
government sponsored response to territorial
claims being made by other nations at the
time. The USNS North Star and USS
Bear set up a West Base on the Ross
Ice Shelf in January 1940 followed by East
Base on Stonington Island on the other side
of the continent off the Antarctic Peninsula
in March 1940. Each base had aircraft and
dog teams for exploring and mapping
purposes. The progress of WW2 led to a
removal of funding and the expedition was
cancelled in 1941 with the Antarctic Service
being disbanded.

1946 - 47 United States Navy Antarctic
Development Project - Operation Highjump.
The largest of all Antarctic Expeditions by
any country involving 13 ships and around
4000 personnel. The aim was to explore and
photograph Antarctica by sea and air and to
provide cold weather operational experience.
Six Douglas R4Ds were involved flying in to
a prepared temporary airstrip from an
aircraft carrier, there were also three
flying boats and a submarine. There were
three distinct task forces, the central one
operated near to Byrd's old base and
established a new base "Little America IV".
The eastern and western task forces operated
either side of this in an attempt to reach
almost all the way around the Antarctic
continent by ship-based and land surveying
and aerial photography. The objective of
conducting naval operations in a polar
environment was fully met with the secondary
objective of obtaining good aerial
photographic coverage mainly met though with
some issues due to weather meaning not all
areas were addressed as fully as was
planned.

1947 - 1948 Ronne Antarctic Research
Expedition. Finn Ronne leads a private
American Expedition based on Stonington
Island on the Antarctic Peninsula to survey
both sides of the peninsula from the air and
ground. The expedition used the old
Stonington Island hut from the 1939-41
United States Antarctic Service Expedition.
Ronne's wife Edith and Jennie Darlington
(wife of Harry Darlington the chief pilot)
became the first two women to winter in
Antarctica. There was co-operation with a
British wintering party on the same island
to make surveying trips. The iced-in ship
the Port of Beaumont was freed by a visiting
ice-breakers from Operation Windmill.

1947 - 48 United States Navy Second
Antarctic Development Project - Operation
Windmill. A much
smaller expedition of two ships, the
icebreakers USS Edisto and USS Burton Island
whose job was to place small onshore parties
to take measurements to assist the placing
of aerial photographs from Operation
Highjump. The name "windmill" came from the
use of helicopters in deploying shore
parties.

1955 - 98 United States Navy Antarctic
Expeditions - Operation Deep-Freeze.
In 1956-57, the US Navy in conjunction with
scientific teams from the National Science
Foundation (NSF)established bases in
Antarctica in preparation for the
International Geophysical Year (IGY)
1956-57. "Operation Deep-Freeze" was the
name given to all subsequent annual
expeditions until 1998 when the Naval
Antarctic Support Unit was disbanded.
International Geophysical Year (IGY) 1957 -
1958. The USA was
one of the leading nations in this international
event that was pivotal in establishing Antarctica
as a continent for peace and science leading
to the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1961.

Current -
United States
Antarctic Program
USAP- 1961 - present. See top
of page.

Territorial Claims

The USA has not previously claimed any part
of Antarctica and does not do so at the
present. However, the right is asserted to
make such a claim in the future should this
course of action be chosen.

The Antarctic Treaty, Article IV § 2 states:
“No acts or activities taking place while the
present Treaty is in force shall constitute
a basis for asserting, supporting or denying
a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica.
No new claim, or enlargement of an existing
claim, to territorial sovereignty shall be asserted
while the present Treaty is in force”.

So the Antarctic Treaty does not suspend or
defer existing claims, though it does state
that:

No activities occurring after 1961 can
be the basis of a territorial claim.

No new claim can be made.

No claim can be enlarged.

Practically though territorial claims have
been effectively suspended since 1961.